Toronto van attack ‘hits home’ in Sharks’ dressing room

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A injured person is put into the back of an ambulance in Toronto after a van mounted a sidewalk crashing into a crowd of pedestrians on Monday, April 23, 2018. The van apparently jumped a curb Monday in a busy intersection in Toronto and struck the pedestrians and fled the scene before it was found and the driver was taken into custody, Canadian police said. (Aaron Vincent Elkaim/The Canadian Press via AP)

SAN JOSE — Sharks assistant coach Steve Spott lost his breath Monday when he learned that 10 people were killed by a rental van that went over the curb in his neighborhood and bulldozed through pedestrians indiscriminately for more than a mile.

The intersection of Yonge Street and Finch Avenue, where the attack started, is about three miles from Spott’s home in uptown Toronto.

“When I heard Finch and Yonge, I thought, ‘There’s no way,’” Spott said. “It was too close to home for a lot of us. You could just never imagine something like that happening in Toronto.”

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The van attack in Toronto isn’t the first time that tragedy has impacted the Sharks locker room this season. Like the rest of the hockey community, the Sharks felt immense sadness for the 16 people killed in the Humboldt Broncos bus crash in Saskatchewan earlier this month. The team also played a preseason game in Las Vegas on Oct. 1, the night of the Mandalay Bay shooting.

“It’s exasperating. So many things like that have happened this year,” forward Joel Ward said. “You can’t walk down the street anymore. You can’t go to a music festival. You can’t go to high school. What’s next? It’s just so sad that all these things keep happening to people who are just living their day-to-day lives.”

Like Spott, Ward took the news especially hard because he grew up in a suburb near Toronto and spends his offseasons in the city.

“I get my haircut right across the street from where it happened,” Ward said. “That’s my home. I’ve been on that street many times, I know that location well. It’s just so sad to wake up in the morning and hear news like that.”

Spott said the news was particularly shocking coming out of a Canadian city.

“Toronto is an extremely peaceful city. Very multicultural,” he said. “You would never expect it because when you look at world affairs, Toronto is one of those cities that everybody appreciates and respects because of how peaceful it is.”

Head coach Pete DeBoer fears that society will become desensitized to tragedies, such as the Las Vegas shooting and the Toronto attack, because they’re occurring so frequently nowadays.

“You don’t want to become numb to it,” the Sharks coach said. “That’s what I fear — because these things are happening monthly that you become numb to it or it just becomes commonplace.

“That should never happen.”

2. Brent Burns breaks in silence (barely).

Brent Burns blew off a scrum of reporters after Monday’s practice, saying, “not today boys” as he squeezed through the gathering in front of his locker stall.

He broke his silence Tuesday, saying about as little as possible in a two-minute session with the media.

Burns is in particularly evasive form these days after he missed two practices with an undisclosed injury in the wake of the Sharks first-round sweep of the Anaheim Ducks. The 33-year old defenseman participated in the Sharks 45-minute practice Tuesday and then bristled at questions from reporters after he tried to leave the team’s practice facilities.

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Here’s what Burns had to say:

Reporter: What do you think of the arena and scene down in Vegas?

Burns: “Yeah.”

Reporter: A little different scene than most places?

Burns: “It’s a good atmosphere, but most rinks are the same.”

Reporter: As someone who grew up in Southern Ontario, so close to Toronto, what was your reaction to the news yesterday.

Burns: “It’s tough. I don’t really want to talk about that stuff.”

Reporter: What did the time off do for you?

Burns: “I don’t know. Not much.”

Reporter: Pete talked about how in the Edmonton series…

Burns: “That was last year.”

Reporter: When opponents are keying in on you, what are the best ways to handle that?

Burns: “I don’t know. We’ll have to see.”

Reporter: Are you used to teams paying more attention to you now?

Burns: “It’s different every series. We’ll see.”

The reigning Norris Trophy-winner eventually provided a 25-word answer to a question about rest from radio broadcaster Dan Rusanowsky.

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